Life is short. Break the rules, forgive quickly, kiss slowly, love truly, laugh uncontrollably, and never regret anything that makes you smile. We're not quantified; there's no chart of desire. When the roaring flames of your heart have burned down to embers, may you find that you have married your best friend. [Steven Tyler]

Friday, December 14, 2007

The decorating is coming on. Today I have finished the swag above the French windows and the tree in the dining room so I'm quite pleased with myself. We also dressed the stairway with a swag and lights this evening but there is still the tree that goes in the entrance hall to put up and dress.

I will post more photos as the rooms are completed - hopefully, this weekend should see the majority of the decorating finished!

In my last post I mentioned my addiction the the Bind-It-All from Zutter and how useful it has proved to be for making little memory albums. I have photographed one of the albums I made especially for my dog Diesel.

The cover has been painted with Ranger's Paint Dabbers before being triple embossed and stamped into using Elusive Images Funky Doodles Hearts Themeplate. I used Hambley overlays and their screen printed vellum's to add interest to the album pages and kept all the other pages black for maximum impact. The colours haven't come up too well in these photo's, the cover is actually quite a bright pink. All of the stamps used on the pages are from the Funky Doodles collection which are great for scrapbooking and all general stamping projects.

I was really pleased with how the Dotty Swirls worked so well as decorative photo corners. I added page index tabs using two jumbo punches from McGill. Of course, Diesel posed so beautifully every time the camera was pointed in his direction!

The whole thing was finished with a rainbow of coloured ribbons tied to the 'O' ring spine of the book and believe it or not, this was made in a morning and there are quite a few more pages that I haven't shown here.

Thursday, December 13, 2007

Just where is the time going? I don't seem to have stopped all week and there is still so much to do. The outside of the house is decorated, all the lights are up and there's just the fresh wreath to source for the front door.

The inside? Well that's a whole other story. Still wading through baubles and putting up trees and swags and I haven't even started the shopping yet. But am I bovvered? Nah!

One thing is for certain, I'm going to have to buy the Christmas Cards this year. Definitely no time to make them. In fact, I can't even get into my craft room at the moment there is so much stuff being stored in there until we can put all the empty boxes that have been housing the Christmas decorations, back into the loft.

I am getting withdrawal symptoms. I haven't crafted since the 01st of December during our Christmas Open Day at work. But I'm looking forward to getting everything done in the house and then I will have time to play and make stuff between Christmas and New Year. I have so many projects in my head that I want to do, I've had to make notes otherwise I'll forget what I have in mind.

One of my favourite tools of this year has to be the Bind-It-All and I have been making lots of little tag books and albums with it. It is so versatile and easy to use and as I also love scrapbooking, it's great to be able to make my own albums to the size and thickness that I need.

This is a little Christmas Book with Cream, Green and Red pages..... just waiting to be filled.

And this one is my 'Fun' book. It's going to house photos and journaling from our event days at work. We have certainly had some FUN in the past few months, just wait for some of the photos!

Both of these books have been covered with papers printed from the Artylicious 'Season's Greetings' CD ROM and the chipboard letters are by Maya Road. They have been coloured with the Ranger paint dabbers, triple embossed with UTEE and then stamped into with the Holly Background stamp from Elusive Images Holly Flourish A4 Themeplate. Everything is available here: http://www.graphicus.co.uk/

This is a sneak peak of some of the pictures that may feature in this little book, taken at our Children In Need Crop which took place in November..........

My Mantra:

Life shouldnot be a journeyto the graveWith intention ofarriving safelyIn a pretty, andwell preserved body.Butrather to skidin broadside,chocolate in one hand, martini in the other,thoroughlyused up,Totally worn outand loudly proclaimingWOWWHAT A RIDE!